When I was 14 I was in a bad jet ski accident and really messed up my teeth. My front 2 teeth were shoved completely into my gums and i lost my number 10 tooth. I had braces on at the time which saved most of the teeth. What they did was pull them down, put in a bunch of stitches and put the braces back on. I was without a tooth for some time while it healed and then they put a bridge on for the #10 attached to the #11 tooth. It has been 14 years since the accident and the bridge and everything was going fine. We have been watching the resorption of the 2 upper middle teeth as they have been slowly dying. Now i have pain in on of my front tooth and from the x-ray we can see that there is not much root left and is about dead. What my dentist is recommending is to pull the 2 front teeth. Take out the old bridge tooth and do a new bridge all the way across the 2 front teeth, so in essence a 5 unit bridge. Is this what would be recommended, or would implants be the way to go?

If you can afford it I would TOTALLY do implants. They can be spaced in such a way that you may only need two or three of them for stability of the five new teeth. I have several implants myself and I love them. Wonderful investment and the actual implant placement itself was a piece of cake. Good luck :-)

I would do lots of research before embarking on dental implants. After all, their placement entails surgery, and things can go wrong. A friend of mine endured a very serious infection after having an implant placed, and if he had it all to do over again, he would have chosen a bridge. And contrary to what some say, implants generally do not last "forever." Even if all goes well with the placement, peri-implantitis is a real threat to an implant's long-term survival.

I have had a dental bridge to replace a premolar and I regret it badly. I wish I had a time machine to go back and have an implant placed... If you can afford it and are a good candidate (i.e. have enough bone), totally go for implants.